Windy Weekend On The Avon And Stour

[Catfish Virgin (Still!)]

Home alone this last weekend, I decided to hang the petrol expense and drive down to a club stretch of the Hampshire Avon just below Ringwood. The aim was again to do a bit of exploring and find some good old fashioned trotting swims with the targets being dace and maybe chub. After much wandering around and lots of indecision I settled on a likely looking "trot" down towards some shallows. The wind was really gusting strongly but fortunately was generally upstream so although difficult it was manageable. The rather cheap "social housing" on the opposite bank didn't look too inviting and who wants a river like the Avon at the bottom of their garden anyway?



Trotting maggot and or caster produced a succession of small dace and chublets with the occassional better dace of around 6oz. Eventually I contacted a better stamp of chub but only succeeded in losing one of around 2lbs at the net. The next chub was also a bit bigger but was seized by a pike (which was about the same size) under the rod tip! In the next couple of hours a "gang" of pike decided to mess up my day as they seized almost all the fish I hooked. Most were small, around 4lb to 6lb, but one very much bigger, possibly close to 20lbs, made a brief appearance as it grabbed a dace. I remained in contact for some time but the inevitable eventually happened as the line parted. After a chat with the bailiff, we both came to the conclusion that these pike would disappear on 1st October (when fishing for them is allowable on this stretch)!

Although the pike caused a bit of mayhem, my day trotting probably produced about 10lbs of dace and chublets plus a couple of bigger chub approching 3lbs. A thoroughly enjoyable trip.

Sunday dawned very wet and windy and my only hope was to watch some overpaid tennis players or some robot drivers tear around a bit of tarmac in the wet. But it was a "conversation" on another forum about the whys and wherefors of the coarse fishing close season that did it! Far too heavy for a Sunday afternoon, the gear was still in the car and there was just enough petrol left, so, off to Throop I went!

I eventually settled in a swim below the New Weir at about 3pm. This one is well known but I'd never fished it before. A nice deep hole behind an island of reedmace and running down to some weedy shallows. I was sat on the concrete "triangle" with the flow left to right:



The view from the opposite bank (a busy public footpath):


Sometimes this area is a bit of an "aquarium" as it often holds some very big chub and barbel. A bit daunting as they are not at all easy to fool, they've seen everything and there's often a lot of walkers, joggers etc moving along the far bank. There were a few good chub resident when I scanned the water with my polaroids and I glimpsed what was possibly a very decent barbel. My plan was to fish well into the first hour of darkness which is when they tend to become active.

A reasonably heavy feeder filled with dampened pellets allied to a couple of 10ml pellets on a hair rig to 6lb fluoro was my chosen method, aiming to fish as tight as possible to the trailing weed.

Not suprisingly the first couple of hours passed by quietly but eventually the tip went round and I thought I had a decent chub. But it soon became clear I had yet another eel (I thought they were becoming rare?). This one was over 2lbs and a fine example, but not want I wanted. Three more of similar size followed - eels like halibut pellets!

I switched to 10ml "source" boilies and immediately had a "proper" bite that turned out to be a chub of around 2lbs - thats better! But that was it for a while. At around 8pm I had another chub, a little bigger, and also lost one other in the weed. As the light faded on went the starlight tip indicator and bites, real and imagined (!), came quick and fast. Three more chub to about 3lbs came to the net, all of them in pristine condition:



At about 10pm, with just 15 minutes before official packing up time, I had a real wrap around bite. A very solid heavy response was felt as something headed upstream and then down again but at no time was I in any sort of control. I eventually got it somewhere near the net but it was still heading upstream - I turned on my head lamp and glimpsed what was probably a mirror carp of around 12lbs just before it disapeared into the reedmace at the head of the swim! That would have been my first river carp for over 30 years!

Still, it was many times better than watching tennis and F1.

[pingu]

what a cracking weekend neil

dead jealous


dave

[Norfolkboy]

Great stuff Neil

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Great read mate

[ctwhitelaw]

well done mate

[Greenheart]

Great read Neil. Shame about that Carp though. Oh & would you mind putting my name on the list for one of those tatty little Council houses on the far bank. I don't expect ther'e very sought after as I expect they are prone to flooding.....